Mike Mettler

Rhino just added two great titles to their ongoing AAA 180g 1LP High Fidelity series — namely, The Doobie Brothers’ March 1973 offering The Captain and Me and Herbie Hancock’s May 1972 effort, Crossings. Read on for all the AAA details. . .

While we’re waiting to upload some first-hand reports from the intrepid AP team that attended this past weekend’s Capital Audio Fest, we thought we’d take a moment to look at some new top-shelf moving magnet (MM) cartridges from Ortofon. The Danish company just announced seven additions to their vaunted 2M series — namely, seven new MM carts specifically designated as 2MR. Read on to see what’s in the feature set for the 2MR series as a whole as well as each respective SRP for Ortofon’s fine new MM cartridge array. . .

Since we went to the upper reaches of aspirational gear with yesterday’s look at an uber-high-end phono preamp, we figured we’d swing the SRP pendulum back the other way today and eyeball a new, and quite affordable, piece of equipment from noted German manufacturer Rekkord — namely, their new F100 turntable. Read on to find out more about the budget-minded F100 ’table and its feature set. . .

Phil Manzanera is quite the worldly musician. Lately, the guitarist/composer has been on a tear with his Roxy Music bandmate, saxophonist Andy Mackay, with three LPs en route: AM PM, Roxymphony, and Christmas — plus a fourth with Tim Finn, a limited edition 3LP set. During a recent Zoom interview with AP editor Mike Mettler, Manzanera discusses how AM PM instinctually came together, the differences between composing instrumentals as opposed to music accompanied by lyrics, and which Roxy Music album he feels is perfectly sequenced for vinyl playback. . .